Sennheiser HD540, HD250 Linear, HD560 Ovation Review - The Late 80's Masters - 1986/87

0:00 welcome to another vintage headphone review GQ is your host today and I will be reviewing the Sennheiser HD 540 the HD 560 Ovation and the HD 250 [Music] linear as these models are all from the late 1980s it's expected that the earpads of these headphones are not used ful anymore while that's the case for the 560 the 540 and 250s pads are not just present but still in near full working order 35-year-old pleather pads that are still

0:47 functional most modern pleather pads barely last 2 years what happened all suspension straps are in good working order but the pleather coating on The Ovations has mostly peeled off other than that they're all fine the build quality appears to be superb even the cables which seem to be a weak point as they're so thin are completely fine these headphones like most of Sis's Enthusiast headphones up to the modern 600 series are almost fully modular and can be taken apart without tools and serviced at home even the cups are mounted to the headband with a universal ball and socket joint that can be easily popped out for quick replacement things do get a bit more scary if we go inside the headphone and

1:33 take a look at the drivers I won't go into the 250 linear again as there's a stray voice wire that I don't want to go near again but the HD 540 and 560 is another matter also all three of the drivers look almost identical from what I've seen and they all disassemble in roughly the same way even the plastic baffle Clips holding the HD 560 driver in place are much smaller than those found on the hd600 series so the drivers are much easier to remove or replace there is a significantly reduced chance of snapping the plastic here since much less pressure is required to bend these tabs although I found that simply bending the

2:19 entire baffle frame a little helps too since it is impossible to break without extreme force the drivers look great and are obvious precursors to the HD 580 and 600 series unlike the modern drivers Sennheiser has cut a hole in the middle of the the dome in the middle of the driver and covered it with an ultra thin porous fabric I think they were trying to do two main things here first to reduce Distortion as the dynamic driver Dome is typically where the most unwanted resonances occur so removing it almost entirely is one way to do it just like the HD 800's ring radiator secondly it reduces the driver's in internal chamber pressure which in turn means less air resistance

3:05 for a faster motor response which should allow for higher detail retrieval it's likely any extra weight gained from the layer of fabric and glue was a welcome trade-off against the internal air pressure this is also something you may have seen on some vintage loudspeakers although the thin fabric dust caps on those large woofers would have actually provided significantly less weight the build gets an easy 9 out of 10 things get tricky when we analyze the sound you have to remember at the time these headphones were made headphones

3:53 were still regarded as accessories by most high-fi Enthusiast and as such they would be plugged into large speaker amps which had the benefit of analog tone controls or simple EQ brace yourself here's a graph of the HD 560 Ovation there's no escaping the absolutely Himalayan treble Peak which sits 10 DB proud over the vast majority of the mid-range does it sound subjectively bad yes and no does it sound objectively bad not in a million years the tuning presents orchestral and classical music in an extremely live and realistic way the tomra feels alive and fully present for a high level of realistic instrument detail you have to look at extremely expensive modern flagships or

4:39 electrostatic headphones and even then there's no guarantee of requiring the same tomell characteristics or staging as this headphone I enjoyed these most through my FY sk01 which allowed me to give a subtle base boost and treble reduction the kind of tone control that would have been taken for granted in the 80s compared to the historical king of classical the AKG k501 if the 501 is like sitting in a large Concert Hall somewhere closer to the middle of the hall the HD 560 Ovation is like sitting 5 to 10 rows from the front it's like you want to feel a bit more of the sound pressure from the orchestra both are classical Masters just different unfortunately

5:24 subbase volume is still lacking while it can take a decent amount of tone correction it will never be authoritative or substantial like modern Dynamics or planers a simple tone correction can only take the bass so far so if you switch to some Modern electronic music for example it will quickly become bloated before the subbase reaches a normal level leaving some tracks sounding a bit too thin or old school neutral I can happily give the sound quality an 8 out of 10 or a nine if you only listen to classical the hd250 linear is decidedly very close to its namesake in my experience as long as most of the tone stays within a range of 10 DB it will largely be perceived as being objectively good as long as any

6:11 big dips and Peaks within that range are in the correct places for its age the hd250 fits this category on its own the graph doesn't look like much but there are some interesting points that are easier to make if we overlay a graph of the biodynamic dt770 pro something I've noticed after listening to and measuring hundreds of headphones is that what looks like and sounds neutral or enjoyable in an open bank headphone should not be directly compared to closed backs so while an open back will often sound better the flatter it measures with a slight downward slope it's not always the case with closed backs there are some tuning tricks that can actually make a closed-back headphone sound bigger and better so let's talk about

6:58 these correct dips and Peaks for example the dip between 2 to 300 HZ looks like a big problem on paper but what this does in both the dt770 and hd250 linear is that it largely removes any possibility of the base bloating and bleeding into the lower mids this tuning trick also does a great job of improving instrument separation and general Clarity and as described the subbase is truly almost linear with no significant drop off all the way down to 20 HZ with only the slightest rolloff down to 10 unlike many frequency response databases all my graphs go down to 10 Herz this is why there are many headphones that exist that have excellent subbase extension

7:44 which often provides a greater sense of scale and body to the sound compared to headphones which crap out just before 20 HZ like even some very expensive modern planars I don't want to hide this information because it tells us a lot about the character of the headphone the base on this headphone is awesome not just for a close back or for a vintage Sennheiser but by all modern standards it's actually borderline overbearing at times I'm even tempted to turn it down a few decibels with some electronic music the first thing however most people will do is turn down the treble with the very best mastering this likely won't be an issue but on tracks with infamously piercing treble like Creep by radio head or Bangarang by Skrillex the hd250 will swiftly punish

8:29 your ears the mid-range is the part of this headphone I am most conflicted about it's also the hardest part to change with simple tone correction the slow rise all the way up to around 2.5 khz does some weird things to most genres making vocals and instruments sound a bit thin and in your face in some Modern and modern genres like classic rock pop and electronic classical music is however more than acceptable if you're looking for a good way to listen to classical music in relative isolation this does a fair job then there's metal orchestral Rock and progressive rock it didn't matter what I threw at this headphone and the

9:15 more power and volume you give it the better it got Freon a leash by K just sounded musical system of a Down's dreaming was extremely articulate and energetic Hysteria by Muse sounded almost live this own ink by S tanken had almost no congestion almost all headphones fail this test BFG division by MC Gordon was just visceral and only improved with a small tiny extra base boost the rise in the midst does some amazing things to these genres puts the guitars and vocals up front and creates a more live sound something very difficult to achieve in a closed back headphone since there's only a limited range of genres where this headphone truly stands Above the Rest and requires

10:03 some careful small tone corrections I can only give it a seven out of 10 but when the Synergy is there it reaches an easy subje of eight out of 10 maybe even a nine in some cases for me personally the HD 540 stands out of this crowd here with only a small treble Peak around 9 khz and an almost entirely neutral presentation they are similarly expansive and as musical as the HD 560 ovation but without that sense of being pushed up front being force fed all the detail and emotion directly to your brain the HD 540 clearly Falls closer to the objective middle ground and is a competent historical genre master and a true Flagship model in my opinion so you

10:48 can expect it to perform well until you try anything with extreme subbase requirements there are however three main points I would like to make about this headphone firstly there are two versions of the HD C 540 and the earpads the old version is a convoluted sandwich of various Foams surrounded by fabric with a layer of plastic in the middle and finished off with a layer of pleather on the area of the pad that touches your head these ear pads here are the later version with thicker foam and uh they are fully surrounded in velour the earlier earpad version provides a much thinner sound with focus on the treble the lat version this one

11:33 is by far the more balanced version secondly these were considered the flagship model before the HD 580 and the 600 series so compared to the HD 580 600 and 650 the HD 540 has a grander sense of space and musical performance at the cost of slightly high fatigue I have always considered the HD 600 series as the most average headphone ever made I don't mean average sound quality or anything like that but that everything about them is as close to precisely in the middle of all aspects of sound presentation base is neither too dry or tight or too loose and boomy treble is neither too harsh or too soft Sound

12:20 Stage is neither too small or extra large tomra is neither hyperrealistic or like luster these are the qualities that I believe give the 600 series it's legendary status as they try to do as little extra as possible which is a grand achievement in of itself the HD 540 is different it is more focused on the performance at the cost of subbase volume some light trouble fatigue and a tomra that leans more on the side of exaggerated realism and none of these qualities are right or wrong or good or bad they're all just different flavors that different people will enjoy or appreciate sennheiser's long history of producing worldclass headphones certainly peaked strongly in the late ' 80s this series is a clear and

13:07 significant Step Above their early 80s Series in terms of musicality and versatility but a slight departure from a long tradition of seeking subjective neutrality with the right tone Corrections none of these headphones will disappoint most modern headphone enjoyers as long as you're looking for a specific sound for a specific genre fairly decent aftermarket earpads can be found for all three headphones and I don't see any reason why any of them wouldn't keep working for another 35 years take it easy and I'll see you in the next one